The carbon tax is no more. I've already said a great deal on the live blog this week about how absurd this is – to repeal a policy that various pieces of evidence suggested was working – and replace it with either nothing, or with next to nothing.

I have been a supporter of carbon pricing since I first understood it was a valid public policy response to constraining carbon pollution. I was a supporter of the concept when John Howard pursued in 2007, and have been a consistent supporter of a market based mechanism to reduce emissions ever since. I was a supporter when Greg Hunt, as an up and coming junior minister in the Howard government, moved decisively behind the scenes to get his then boss to support emissions trading.

This policy has the virtue of being economically rational and consistent with the balance of available climate science.

Even if you argue the toss on the science, if you think somehow you know better than people who have dedicated their professional lives to understanding climate science, then carbon pricing, on the balance of the evidence is a reasonable piece of public policy risk management – a sound precautionary principle.

In Australia, despite multipartisan screw ups, despite Labor making a total hash of this, the Greens making the perfect the enemy of the good, despite all the populist clap trap from the Coalition under Tony Abbott on this subject, the parliament actually implemented carbon pricing.

The US, under the current president, would like to implement carbon pricing but cannot because of legislative deadlock. Now we've undone it, and it's not clear whether there will be another opportunity to replace what is now gone.

I know Abbott went to the election promising to scrap this policy. Of course the prime minister should be congratulated for upholding his election promises as a point of principle. But given he's broken so many other election promises, I wish he'd added this to the list. This would have been a terrific election commitment to break.